Everything
by Evaden
Summary: I hate Everything about you why do I love you? [DHr: set five years after graduation from Hogwarts]
1. Chapter 1

---Chapter One

The day that Hermione's life really began was the day she looked death in the eye.

Death came in a strange form. It appeared to her just as death always came; when she least expected it. But this time, Hermione saw it in the face of someone that she hadn't seen for years...someone she had thought to have died long ago.

She was just walking the grounds at Hogwarts that evening for a moments' quiet reflection. As a teacher at the school, her day was busy and full of stress, and a calming stroll by herself in the freshness of the outdoors was an evening ritual. It helped her mind to clear and rejuvinate for the rigors of the next day.

She hadn't meant to enter the Forbidden Forest. Everyone knew that the forest was now even more literally forbidden due to the Wizarding Worlds' war with Lord Voldemort. Evil that had lurked unseen in unplotted caves now ventured more and more out into the openness of the trees; dark creatures became increasingly vicious towards any other form of life. These and many other factors added to the danger, rendering the odds of survival in the heart of the forest nearly nonexistent.

Hermione hadn't been thinking straight. Her mind felt muddled that evening; students that day had been particularly rowdy and concentration levels had been slim. She blamed the lack of focus on the fabulous autumn day of the kind that fell on schooldays and not during holidays. Even Hermione herself had felt for once that she would rather have been outside enjoying the weather than trapped in a stuffy schoolroom teaching Arithmancy to poorly prepared students.

She didn't realize just where she was until she was nearly a hundred feet from the Forest' Edge. When it finally came to her, Hermione stopped dead in her tracks and determined immediately to turn around, but she was stopped again by a faint moan coming from somewhere deeper into the woods. She became still, and listened.

The moan happened again.

This time, she pinpointed the direction from which it came. The cry was definitely not from any creature of the sort that thrived in the Forbidden Forest. Hermione's curiosity got the better of her, and with a sense of trepidation she continued on further.

The Forest got darker the closer to the heart of it Hermione went and she would have turned back if the moaning, growing increasingly stronger and more piteous, had not led her on. Finally, she reached a small clearing in the forest, and a dead end with impenetrable brambles on all sides.

She heard the moan again, and this time Hermione concluded that it was coming from somewhere in the brambles. It seemed to be hardly a few feet to her left. Pulling her wand from her robes she aimed it at the thorn patch and reduced it to twigs. As the brambles fell away, a small field of ferns appeared before her, and she noticed immediately that a trail had been worn away, very slightly, and almost as if someone had been dragged through it. The path led down a small incline to the mouth of a well-concealed cave that opened at the base of a hill

Her senses tingling, Hermione held her wand out before her as she walked hesitantly over to the hole and looked down into it. The forest around her had become eerily silent.

"_Lumos_," she barely heard herself whisper. As her wand lit up she was disheartened to see nothing but dirt walls continuing down into the ground, farther than her eyes could follow.

Someone moaned again, miserably, and Hermione heard it echo distinctly out of the depths of the cave. "Oh dear," she thought miserably, but mustering her courage she crouched down and entered the cave. The roof was so low that she could hardly move through it without stooping her head and adopting a walk like a crab's. Progression was slow, and Hermione's pulse raced faster and faster as she went further down into the ground. Finally her light caught the reflection of a panel of stone ground.

The end of the tunnel.

Hermione felt her stomach drop as if she had just leapt off the top of a tall building. Shaking nervously, she prepared herself for anything she might possibly encounter in the bowels of a mysterious cave in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, though her mind found it difficult to ponder the extense of the magical evils that patrolled these sorts of dark places. She had almost convinced herself to turn back when the room in front of her was filled with the sound of someone in pain.

Wand blazing, Hermione's sympathetic heart went out to the person, whomever it was, and she scuttled as fast as she could down to the end of the tunnel. The light wavered up to reveal a crude room, circular, lined with badly-hewn wooden boards and roofed by the dirt of the hill alone. The ground of the place was paved in stone.

It was not the room that struck her so much as the figure of a man, beaten and bloody, lying in shackles at the far end of it. Hermione cried out in alarm before she could stop herself. Throwing caution to the wind - something she rarely did - Hermione launched herself forward and fell to her knees beside the prone figure. Hesitantly, she laid her hand on his right shoulder as he rested on the left side of his body, facing away from her, and pulled him over onto his back. She was torn to see that he was barely in his twenties, perhaps no older than herself. With a groan, the man flopped over and his head lolled to face her, bloodied, with the eyes closed as if he were dead.

Then she recognized him.

"Malfoy?" she gasped in disbelief.

She opened his eyes slowly with the tips of her fingers on his eyelids. Malfoy appeared to be dead. Blue irises were glazed over with the glass stare that only morbidity could create, and the skin of his face was cold to the touch. Hermione's heart stopped, and she pulled her hand away as though she had been stung.

Her first thought was immediately to guess what had happened to him.

He couldn't be dead. Why, she had heard him cry out only a few seconds before she found him. Desperately, Hermione grabbed her wand from the floor where she had dropped it in her haste, and flicked it at Malfoy's still form.

"_Ennervate_!"

Sparks shot out at him and his body twitched hopefully for a moment, before becoming still again. Hermione brushed the sweat worriedly from her eyes before trying the spell again. Then, when it remained without effect, she tried it again, more urgently than ever. But nothing happened. Throwing down her wand in desperation, her mind forgetting nearly everything she had ever learned in school, Hermione bent over Malfoy's body and pressed her hands to his chest. One, two, three...to fifteen. Then she put her mouth on his. Quickly she attempted to resuscitate him, breathing deeply into his lungs, then back to revive his breathing by pumping her hands over his chest once again. With a small cry of exasperation she reached the count of fifteen again and flung her mouth over Malfoy's still lips again. Once, twice, she breathed into him.

Her third breath met a wall of air. Trembling, Hermione withdrew and looked over into the once sightless eyes. She saw him then, looking back at her; alive.

For a moment, there was silence. Then Malfoy tried to speak.

"Hermione Granger," he managed weakly. "We meet again." Then he fell back in a faint.


	2. Chapter 2

---Chapter Two

Hermione stayed by his side until he reawoke, and all the time her mind was whirling. She figured immediately that Malfoy could not be taken back to Hogwarts, even if she had managed to drag him there herself. She didn't know exactly why he was lying here in this obscure little room, mangled as he was, but she figured that it couldn't be for any honest reason. Hermione strongly suspected Malfoy's condition to be connected to the orders, or possibly even the actions, of Voldemort; with her old schoolmate's unabashed ties to the Death Eaters, this could be the only logical conclusion. Hermione reeled with questions. The answers could possibly hold some small insight into the actions of the enemy.

When Draco finally began to regain consciousness, Hermione wasted no time in conjuring up a little water to revive him. He came around slowly, for it was very obvious that he was greatly wounded. Hermione applied what magic she knew to his wounds and cleaned up the blood, or at least as much of it as she could, but Malfoy seemed to suffer from more than simple abrasions. From the way that his leg and arm were twisted grotesquely, Hermione guessed that they were both broken.

"Malfoy," she prodded gently as he began to open his eyes and look around in a momentary daze. He locked on her as she spoke and his gaze seemed to harden.

"What are you doing here?" he asked accusingly, though his voice was weak.

"I'm saving you," Hermione retorted promptly. "I heard you moaning so I followed the noise." Malfoy didn't seem to hear her as he fell back against the floor. He winced as he tried to move his broken arm. Hermione laid a restraining hand on his chest, forcing him to remain still.

"Why are hurt, Draco?" she asked softly.

Malfoy lay still, and appeared to be thinking hard. His features sharpened and lines began to form over his brow as he ruminated. Hermione guessed that he might be loathe to tell her the truth, especially if it concerned his master, Lord Voldemort, whom she was sure he still held rigid allegiance too. 

"Who did this to you?" she prompted. "Was it Voldemort?"

Malfoy twitched, but it wasn't through fear of the name like the reactions of so many of those who worked and attended school at Hogwarts. It was out of anger. Hermione figured that she had guessed right.

"Death Eaters?"

This time Malfoy remained without expression. Hermione sighed. "Well, all right," she said finally. "I won't ask you anymore questions today. You're a terrible mess right now anyways." She surveyed him, lying there, and as if he sensed her gaze, his eyes opened.

"I can't leave you here," Hermione said, though more to herself than to him. "I should take you back to Hogwarts..." Malfoy shook his head urgently; so urgently that Hermione became alarmed. "Very well!" she tried to calm him down. "I won't take you back to the school, but I know very few spells for setting bones, and you'll need much more skill than mine to set broken limbs like you have if you intend to walk again."

She had to do something about his condition, even if she couldn't take him back to the school for proper medical aid. (The thought of turning down what was most practical made her shudder.) But she was resourceful, and deliberated with the idea of setting the broken limbs into muggle splints. Hermione had never set a splint before but she'd read a book in which it had been done.

"It shouldn't be too hard," she murmured to herself. Then to Malfoy, "Wait here. I'll be right back."

Hermione scuttled out of the cave and up into the fresh air. The change in atmosphere was intoxicating and so much more preferable to the stifling surroundings of the cave that she nearly forgot what she had come for. "Find a couple good sticks," Hermione reminded herself, almost reprovingly.

Finding a good stick in the forest turned out to be harder than it had seemed. No matter how many of them a person managed to find during his lifetime, the moment you actually needed one they all disappeared.

"It's rather as if they've all gone into hiding!" said Hermione in exasperation after a good deal of fruitless searching had compelled her to stop and collect her wits.

With a final attempt she drew out her wand and aimed it at a seedling tree. Within moment she had spliced it and armed herself with five stout branches.

"Excellent," she said, beaming, and wondering how Muggle Boy Scouts did it easily enough for them to want to go back and make it a hobby. The size and length of the branches made the trip down into the cave a good deal more difficult, but Hermione managed to wrench her way through.

The light at the end of her wand shone over a much paler Malfoy lying on the ground and it was with a sickening start that Hermione realized he was getting worse. Oh dear, she thought anxiously. "I've got the sticks, now all I need is some rope...or something."

Hermione raised her wand again and conjured up enough twine to bind several broken limbs. "Very good," she said, and laughed nervously as it occurred to her that she was losing her calm. Cleaing her throat, she set to work over Malfoy. He was very weak and did nothing to help her at all, but his inactivity made it easier to set the splint. At least he wasn't struggling, she told herself.

After what seemed like days but was in actuality only a few hours, Hermione succeeded in setting the arm and leg well enough to please even her demanding eye.

"There," she said happily. "You ought to heal up decently now. Just don't move more than you need to or you might upset the splint." Hermione looked at her patient and felt a twinge of pity well up. Again her curiousity nearly overwhelmed her as she wondered just what had put him into such a state. But Malfoy offerred no more explanation now than before.

At least he was sitting up. She had managed to help him prop his back against the wall in order to get him out of the grotesque postion he had crumpled into before. Hermione stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans before going to the tunnel and looking out. The sky was growing dark, and she knew that she should be getting back.

"I'll bring you food and water, so you won't starve," she assurred Malfoy, kneeling down in front of him again to make sure that he heard her, but he didn't look up. He was inspecting his good hand, turning it over, back and forth as he examined the gashes on both sides.

"I want a wand." It was the most he'd said since she'd found him. The very idea of his suggestion, however, was preposterous.

Hermione stopped herself from laughing. "I don't think so," she said. "I don't know why you're here, but for whatever reason it may be I cannot let you have a wand. Especially when I don't know what you'll use it for." Malfoy glared at her then, but said nothing. Hermione walked over to the entrance to the room, preparing to leave.

"Hermione?"

She turned back around. "Yes?"

Malfoy seemed to be struggling with his words. "Why...did you kiss me?" Hermione was stunned for a moment as she tried to remember fleetingly when she had ever kissed Malfoy. Then it hit her.

"Oh!" she laughed. "That wasn't a kiss. That was a Muggle form of...rescucitation."

She could have sworn that she saw his eyes narrow.

"Filthy Mudblood," he scowled, and spit vehemently on the ground. Hermione turned sharply and made her way back up through the tunnel to the open air above. She felt shaken, as if someone had struck her. By all accounts, she should have been used to that sort of insult, having received it from Malfoy himself plenty of times back in the old school days. But part of her felt disappointed, almost as if she had suddenly expected Draco to have changed for the better through his wounds. She couldn't have been more wrong about it, and the sting of the old insult still burned in her soul.

Old habits certainly died hard. 


End file.
